Rehabilitation hospitals that cater to long-term patients recovering from musculoskeletal, neurological, orthopedic, and other conditions use patient room whiteboards to improve communication and provide better service to their patients. Whether the rehabilitation center is a standalone facility or housed in an acute care hospital, these whiteboards can be customized to match the facility’s design and brand and cater to the patients being treated. With years of use in these types of facilities, rehabilitation healthcare whiteboards have been optimized with certain information fields that are most useful to rehab settings and patients.

These are the most effective information fields that can be included on a whiteboard meant for long-term rehabilitation patients.

Care Team Information

Rehab patients work with a number of different care team members. Depending on the reason for their stay, these can include:

• Nurses
• Physical therapists
• Occupational therapists
• Speech therapists

Placing the names and roles of various care team members helps patients and their families understand who is caring for them and what their role is in the rehabilitation process.

Schedules and Timetables

Rehabilitation stays are often long, arduous, and filled with appointments. This can leave patients confused as to what their goals are for the day and what is coming next. The latter is also a cause of stress and anxiety. Being left to wonder what comes next can be unnerving to patients. Using whiteboards as a visual schedule of a patient’s day can help them become more involved in their treatment, less uneasy, and more informed as to what is coming next. Some of the things that can be included on a whiteboard schedule include:

• Appointment times with various therapists
• Upcoming tests and procedures (and the status of tests results)
• Next medication dosage time
• Hours of meals/kitchen service
• Patient visitation hours
• Safety Reminders

Many safety incidents happen because patients forget the rules and reminders that often keep them safe. Simple alerts like “call before you fall” reminds patients who need assistance getting up and using the bathroom to call for a nurse first.

These alerts can also be used for staff. Adding in patient allergies, conditions, fall risks, and needs for assistance serve as a reminder for nurses, therapists and aids, letting them know how best to serve and treat patients.

Patient Goals

Every patient has a set of goals, and care teams are there to help them achieve those goals throughout their stay. Including these goals on whiteboard’s design can help keep patients focused on what they need to do to get to where they want to be (ultimately discharged). Some of these goals can include the ability to:

• Bath on their own
• Dress oneself
• Move on one’s own (including a distance goal)
• Achieve a certain level of cognition
• Regain speech

Space can also be left for a pain scale as well as the current and desired pain level goal.

Space for More Communication and Interaction

Do patients or family members have certain questions, concerns, new goals? Many facilities choose to leave space on their whiteboards that allow patients and families to leave comments that they wish to be addressed. This creates an interactive whiteboard experience that provides an extra level of communication between patients/families and care teams.

Creating a whiteboard solution for a rehabilitation facility? Contact the whiteboard communication experts at Ghent Healthcare today.